This invention relates to a reeling device for fire hoses, which provides a structure to manipulate the winch by means of gears, as a way to reel the hose with less effort than the traditional manual reeling.
Fire fighting is a dangerous task that demands good timing as each and every step is essential and this is true when it comes to fire hose. It is a highly skillful practice knowing to deploy the fire hose next to the fire as soon as possible without leaving fire fighters vulnerable to bum. To have the fire hose always ready for use, it is essential to have it reeled properly. In a day-to-day practice, fire fighters would manually reel a flexible fire hose containing excessive water after using it each time. This suggests a hard task, as first the fire hose would be spread out on the floor before reeling it inch by inch from a specific end. Remaining water is squeezed out in the reeling process that is supposed to be completed in one operation, or a reeled hose would become loose, requiring a new reeling. Besides, a manually reeled fire hose would show an uneven side, making its storage less successful and when using it again by releasing the hose, the uneven side would keep the hose from rolling smoothly and reaching any desired spot.
In order to solve all problems of the time-consuming effort and uneven hose by manual reeling in the traditional practice, the inventor is presenting a kind of reeling device for fire hoses that includes a winch, a gearing kit that controls the winch and an operating handle for the winch and the structural rack to house all the above elements. The central axle hole on the winch comes in the form similar to a figure eight, allowing passage of the two axle centers, of which one fixed axle center passes through the eccentric position of the hole of the winch and connects one end onto the end of the axle center of the winch while the adjacent moving axle center comes in the center of the hole, having a threaded section that allows it to protrude to a specific point and driving the winch by means of the gearing kit and at the same time, holding the fire hose for reeling along with the aforementioned fixed axle center or recessing from the winch dial alone, loosening the center hole that allows easy removal of the hose after reeling. The gearing kit of the invention is made of four gears, of which the first and the second gears have identical gearing ratio while the third gear that comes coaxial with the second one has fewer teeth and engages with the fourth gear having fewer teeth and coaxial with the winch, constructing thus a reducing gearing kit. The first gear is driven directly by a handle that, with the handle arm and the reducing gear, increases the torque and has the fire hose held between the two axle centers to be reeled easily. Another characteristics of the gearing kit is that, with the handle turning clockwise, the transmission in the gearing kit provided by the first, the second, the third and the fourth gear drives the winch for reeling and when turning the handle counterclockwise, only the moving axle center is threaded out, not the winch.
Other characteristics of this invention include a pair of limit rods located on the top of both sides of the structural rack that allow the fire hose be reeled between the two limit rods, eliminating thus physical fatigue in a manual reeling. On the other hand, this invention provides a long rod which, when not in use, is kept in the hollowed rod in the structural rack and when in use, it is kept in front of the winch at a distance that is roughly larger than the width of the flattened hose, making this a limit barrier to the reeling so that a reeled hose would have even edges. Thanks to the operation of the aforementioned device of this invention, a troublesome, time-consuming and accurate hose reeling task will turn out to be an easy, effortless and practical reeling job.